This is purely anecdotal. I have a bad astigmatism. I tend to not wear glasses until I have to. In the garden I don't bother. And oddly, when I do use my glasses everything becomes too much. In my mind scenery becomes unpleasantly cluttered/dirty. It's quite horrible. I prefer the soft focus - but can't read the laptop, watch TV without.
If your astigmatism (cylinder) and/or spherical diopter numbers are very high, your glasses may have significant distortion when looking through any point other than the optical center of the lens, e.g. for peripheral vision. Have you compared contacts with glasses? They provide a much wider field of view.
If you like soft focus, you can try on different drugstore reading glasses (e.g. +0.50) over your normal glasses, to find a reduced strength which lets you see at the desired distance without super-duper-sharp edges. Then ask your optometrist to provide you with a reduced prescription for non-driving or near work tasks. Otherwise, they will prescribe driving-strength glasses to avoid legal liability.
Interesting, my prescription was out of range for contact lenses when last explored. It might be worth me getting something as best as they can get if the contact effect is beneficial.
If your prescription is out of range for contacts, it means it is very weak, so there shouldn't be much distortion in glasses, hence you won't see much difference with contacts.
Easiest would be to find a friendly optometrist who will put your astigmatism prescription into a trial frame, then let you self-adjust the cylinder and axis values until you find your desired blend of clarity and softness at your target distance. They can also advise on the safety of using that prescription vs using no glasses.
